Putting the Fun Into Philanthropy
May 5, 1951—September 1, 2024
IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF
Elizabeth (Liz) Anne Palmieri
MAY 5, 1951—SEPTEMBER 1, 2024
Philanthropy is simply generosity towards humanity... It’s sharing of your time and resources in a way that makes sense.
Liz Palmieri
Liz Palmieri was funny and fun-loving. She was detail-oriented and determined. She was brave and unconventional, but she also knew how to be collaborative and diplomatic, and how to work the system. But most importantly, she was caring. Liz made caring for her community her life’s work.
When Liz died of leukemia in September 2024, the Niagara community that had benefited from decades of her passion, poured that affection back, with gifts in her honour to the Palmieri Family Fund at the Niagara Community Foundation.
The generosity was heartwarming, said Sara Palmieri, one of Liz’s three children. Sara said the children weren’t aware that their parents, Liz and Adrian, had created the fund, but that its existence is in keeping with their mother’s vision and character “and it feels amazing to see how her legacy will continue to live on. It’s a testament to who she was at her essence as she is still giving back to our community.”
From 2000 to 2016, Liz served as the Niagara Community Foundation’s founding executive director. Liz’s love for her community was something her family saw in action, and they had a front row seat to how she did it.
“My mom was always quite determined but in a gentle way,” Sara said. She had big ideas about what could and should happen, “but she was also very pragmatic and systematic in her approach.” Her post-secondary education, which saw her graduate as only one of three women in Mohawk College’s brand-new computer science program in the late 1960s, gave Liz powerful systems tools but was also an apt foreshadowing of her lifelong willingness to take chances with bold, yet well-thought-out, steps.
“My mom knew that even if you can’t see the end result, there is always going to be a path,” Sara said. “And that’s what made her so good at what she did. She would consider all aspects of something and then formulate a plan. Would it always work? No. But I always got the sense from her that there wasn’t anything that she couldn’t do.”
Not only did Liz work to bring resources together to benefit charitable causes, she inspired people with her vision of philanthropy. She made it her mission to make sure everyone knew they could be a philanthropist—no matter their means. She had fun doing it and she did it until the very end. Just months before she died, she recorded a radio conversation about her philosophy. “Philanthropy is simply generosity towards humanity,” she explained. “It’s sharing of your time and resources in a way that makes sense” and anyone can do it. In her work, Liz wasn’t asking people for a handout, she was giving them opportunities to participate in something big and good.
“When you talk to a donor about what they are interested in, it becomes fun,” she explained in the interview.
Liz’s family is grateful that her sense of fun and her caring for her community can live on.
“Philanthropy’s true meaning is the effort or inclination to increase the well-being of humanity,” Sara said.
“Simply, it’s caring for your community. And we need more of that now than ever.”
